It’s getting increasingly hard for Apple to surprise us in the years following the original iPhone in 2007 (OS X Mountain Lion was one notable recent exception.) Case in point: Engadget just got touchy-feely with an iPad 3 prototype and spoiled all the non-fun for the rest of us come Wednesday.

All around Apple’s Cupertino campus there are people working on the Next Big Thing: it could be the iPhone 5 or an iPad 3, a proper Apple TV or a new kind of Mac. It may even be something you could never imagine. And that happens all day, every day. And it’s been going on since Apple was founded.

Hot on the coat tails of yesterday's reveal that Apple's lost yet another iPhone prototype, the two men involved in last year's iPhone 4 prototype scandal have both pled not guilty.

Brian Hogan and Robert Sage Wallower both pleaded not guilty to allegedly nabbing the iPhone 4 prototype in a Redwood City bar last year and then selling it for cash to technology blog Gizmodo. CNET reports that both Hogan and Sage entered their pleas before a judge this morning.

Tell us if you've heard this one before: a guy walks into a bar with a secret iPhone prototype...and you know how the rest goes. Yep, apparently, history has a habit of repeating itself with these things. CNET is reporting that Apple has allegedly lost an iPhone 5 prototype that was left behind at a tequila lounge in San Francisco's Mission District.

Remember that odd MacBook Pro that turned up on eBay earlier this month sporting a MagSafe antenna and SIM slot? It turns out that Apple killed the auction and is now requesting the owner to return it, following an interesting saga involving Craigslist and a local Genius Bar.

It seems like every new iteration of Apple’s notebooks, there’s speculation about when the company might add integrated 3G data to the mix. It still isn’t happening just yet, but that doesn’t mean Cupertino isn’t entertaining the notion -- as evidenced by this 2007 MacBook Pro prototype which has turned up on eBay.

The iPad 2 brought a wealth of new features, like dual cameras and a thinner, lighter body. But what about those other rumored-to-be features that weren’t? Will they be in the iPad 3? Let’s take a look.

Every year we dust off the ol' noggins and come up with what we hope Apple will unleash from the bowels of Cupertino. We've even enlisted the help tech superstars Veronica Belmont, Brian Lam, Michael Brook, Mark McClusky, and Mark Frauenfelder and our readers to come up with future design.

As we wind up this years week of Apple Fauxtotypes, take a trip down memory lane with all of our fauxotypes in one place.

No visit to Apple's future would be complete without fuzzy "spy shots" of upcoming Apple gear. And of course, there's a long history of Photoshopped fakes getting the Twitternet chattering. While occasional product leaks happen—remember the iPhone 4 brouhaha last spring?—Apple is a master of controlling what gets out and what doesn't. But Apple fans are so hungry for details it's no wonder that fakes can quickly gain traction. And rolling out your own Apple fake is surprisingly easy. Just follow our step-by-step guide to grabbing your 15 seconds of internet fame.

The age of wonder is just beginning. Each morning, we shove devices into our pockets that, as kids, we could only goggle at on Star Trek. Now we can Google on them, and that’s not even vaguely impressive. We live in an era when every day sees past science fiction become contemporary mundane reality, and like you, that only whets our thirst for more.

With Apple’s talent for staggering us with innovative design, Cupertino will likely be at the forefront of our culture’s next big holy-crap gadget. Just as surely, Jobs & Co. will keep it nailed down under bulletproof wraps right up until they’re good and ready to tell the world about it.